| The Wild Geese | |
|---|---|
1959 English edition cover |
|
| Author(s) | Mori Ogai |
| Original title | 'Gan' |
| Translator | Ochiai Kingo and Sanford Goldstein |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Tuttle Publishing (English ed.) |
| Publication date | 1911 to 1913 (December 1959 in English) |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 128 pages English paperback |
| ISBN | 0-8048-1070-2 |
| OCLC Number | 328121 |
Mori Ogai's classical novel, The Wild Geese or The Wild Goose (1911–13, 雁 Gan) was first published in serial form in Japan, and tells the story of unfulfilled love set against a background of social change. The story is set in 1880 Tokyo. The novel contains commentary on the changing situation between the Edo and Meiji periods. The characters of the novel are diverse, including not only students preparing for a privileged intellectual life and commoners who provide services to them, but also a pair of highly developed female characters. Mori sympathetically portrays the dilemmas and frustrations faced by women in this early period of Japan's modernization.
The novel was filmed by Shiro Toyoda in 1953 as The Mistress, starring Hideko Takamine as Otama.
Suezo, a moneylender, is tired of life with his nagging wife, so he decides to take a mistress. Otama, the only child of a widower merchant, wishing to provide for her aging father, is forced by poverty to become the moneylender's mistress. When Otama learns the truth about Suezo, she feels betrayed, and hopes to find a hero to rescue her. Otama meets Okada, a medical student, who becomes both the object of her desire and the symbol of her rescue.